Category: ethics
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Empathy as an ascetic ideal
Why would empathy not be a supreme virtue? By ’empathy,’ I mean what most laypersons mean: either feeling what another is badly feeling or acknowledging what the other is badly feeling. By ‘supreme virtue,’ I mean the virtue of virtues, one that is ripped free of context and raised to a principle. That principle would…
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Philosophical portraiture: ‘What the eyes cannot see’
In Aleksandra’s recently completed philosophical portrait (visible below), the man exhibits soft concentration while the woman exudes a soft composure attained through experience and contemplative practice. Both appear to be thinking together about the non-discursive. The allusion in the title is to an early Daoist text called Inward Training. In Verse 4, the authors write, As for the Way: It…
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On a category mistake: ‘Human beings are weak’
Here are three questions that fascinate me: 1.) How did we go from being creatures who above all ‘desire to know’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics I)–let us say: to understand our place in the world–to being creatures who want most of all to be helped (modernity)? 2.) How did the accidental property of weakness (e.g., feeling weak on Tuesday)…
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Against empathy
Consider a commonplace yet erroneous metaphysical assumption about (modern) human beings made by most people today (especially those in the caring profession): In virtue of our being inherently weak and prone to suffering, we human beings yearn to be helped. * Two brief anecdotes that tell against this picture: One philosophical friend suggested, ‘There is nothing more…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 
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